Sebastian

September 6, 2011 | By Charlie Amter, Special to the Los Angeles Times

Paris has been burning brightly for over a decade now as electronic music's luminary dance music factory, spawning chart-toppers such as David Guetta. Many from France's ripe scene find a spiritual and actual home in L.A. and it's not just the mainstream names that take root here. Southern California is developing as a fertile ground for the darker, more experimental side of house and electro (see new L.A. resident Quentin Dupieux, a.k.a. Mr. Oizo) put out by labels such as Ed Banger. One of that label's more interesting affiliated artists, Sebastian, drops by Hollywood's Avalon on Friday night.

When Stuart Murdoch, the frontman for the indie pop group Belle & Sebastian, was shooting his directorial debut "God Help the Girl," he decided to offer a cautionary word to the crew. "I told them, 'You know this movie won't open, because Belle & Sebastian never opens,'" he said, laughing, sort of. In its nearly two-decade history, the Glasgow, Scotland, act may never have had a chart-topping smash. But in a culture of tabloid ephemera and gone-tomorrow musical phenoms, Belle & Sebastian has managed something more elusive: longevity. Now Murdoch has translated the delicate and wry sensibilities that have made the band a long-running tastemaker favorite, known for its melodic nuggets about oddball children and sideways romances, to the medium of film.

It is lunchtime at Soudani's, the most fashionable eatery in this Upstate village, the home town of actor Samuel E. Wright. The actor delivered an indelible performance in one of the country's hottest movies, and yet, not a head turns when Wright enters the restaurant. The oversight is forgivable, given the lack of physical similarity between Wright and his on-screen role. Wright is a tall, spindly black man. His character is 4 inches high and lobster red.

Whatever form Irish novelist and playwright Sebastian Barry happens to be working in, you can be sure that he will be drunk with language. Words make him swoon. He loves the way they sound and slide off each other, the singsong rhythms they fall into under his wand, their echo in time. This devotion to verbal patterning is both his signal strength and conspicuous weakness as a dramatist. In "The Steward of Christendom," Barry's 1995 play now being revived at the Mark Taper Forum as a star vehicle for Brian Dennehy, retrospective prose substitutes for dramatic action.

Regarding Marion F. Himmel's comments about the animated feature "The Little Mermaid" (Saturday Letters, Dec. 16): To describe Sebastian the Crab as a "subservient black" is a bit silly. First of all, anyone who works for a king, in any capacity, is subservient, and, second, Sebastian is red. DANIEL BUHLER Long Beach

In "Sake Bomb," twentysomething video blogger Sebastian (Eugene Kim) has a problem few film characters ever face: a sense of relentless, righteous rage for which there is no simple solution. For Sebastian, life as an Asian American male is one of perpetual defense against silent accusations of foreignness, meek quietness and - the one that really stings - small genitalia. To disabuse the world (or at least his 10 subscribers) of such stereotypes, he bleats the concepts of Asian American Studies 101 over the Internet.

When her prep school eliminates girls' soccer, star player Viola Hastings (Amanda Bynes) switches teams all the way. Putting shared custody to work for her, she takes the place of her twin brother Sebastian (James Kirk) at his new school, their old school's rival, while he absconds to London with his band. Mom (Julie Hagerty), meanwhile, is too absorbed in the upcoming deb ball to notice, and Dad is out to lunch with his collar turned up.

Jim Watterson and George Martin have opened their magnificent 1927 George Washington Smith hacienda in Pasadena for countless bashes, but never one that included an impromptu graveside ceremony. Not until last Sunday night, anyway, when they hosted the post-performance party after the opening of "Do I Hear a Waltz?" at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Right-wing billionaire Sebastian Pinera won Chile's runoff presidential election Sunday, defeating former President Eduardo Frei, the man he bested by a big margin in December's first round of voting. Pinera's triumph ends a 20-year hold on power by Frei's Concertacion political alliance, which is also the party of incumbent President Michelle Bachelet. The coalition has held power since Gen. Augusto Pinochet's 17-year authoritarian regime ended in 1990. Frei conceded the race when -- with 60% of the votes counted -- Pinera had tallied 51.87%.

Near the start of his 90-minute concert on Friday at the Universal Amphitheatre, Mexican singer-songwriter Joan Sebastian saluted a guest in the front row--his private physician. "This is for you, doc," said the 50-year-old pop music veteran in good English. "Great job!" Sebastian shared that aside with a house full of affectionate fans who have followed his recent fight against bone cancer, which at one point brought him to Los Angeles' City of Hope for treatment.

SACRAMENTO - The musical chairs in California's Legislature continues when voters in a Los Angeles-area Assembly district go to the polls Tuesday in a special election to fill a vacant seat. One of the three candidates in the contest - all Democrats - is Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, who is hoping to follow in the footsteps of his father, Mark Ridley-Thomas, who served in the Legislature before being elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The other candidates are former Culver City Mayor Christopher R. Armenta and John Jake, a real estate broker who is president of the Olympic Park Neighborhood Council.

Looking back at the weekend's motor racing, including Jimmie Johnson's sixth NASCAR Sprint Cup title and Sebastian Vettel's win victory at the U.S. Grand Prix, five things come to mind: Johnson raises an extraordinarily high bar even higher. Imagine how daunting Johnson's the 38-year-old driver's dominance feels to his peers. In It must be disheartening. Take Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards and Kasey Kahne. They're among NASCAR's best and had a shot at this year's title by making the Chase for the Cup playoff.

In "Sake Bomb," twentysomething video blogger Sebastian (Eugene Kim) has a problem few film characters ever face: a sense of relentless, righteous rage for which there is no simple solution. For Sebastian, life as an Asian American male is one of perpetual defense against silent accusations of foreignness, meek quietness and - the one that really stings - small genitalia. To disabuse the world (or at least his 10 subscribers) of such stereotypes, he bleats the concepts of Asian American Studies 101 over the Internet.

Daniel Radcliffe, the young actor who rose to movie fame as Harry Potter, is set to dump his flying broomstick for a more conventional mode of transport, playing runner Sebastian Coe in a British film about Coe's fierce rivalry with Steve Ovett. "Gold" will follow the athletes through boyhood as they dueled in the 800- and 1,500-meter races as juniors and then became world-class competitors. At the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Ovett won the 800 and Coe took the longer race. An Embankment Films executive described "Gold" as "a movie about an insatiable need to win, fueled by intense ambition, only possible through the support of loving family.

The U.S. Grand Prix is less than a month away but the Formula One title is likely to be decided long before the series returns to North America. Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel is all but certain to have clinched his fourth consecutive world championship by Nov. 17, when the U.S. race is held at the Circuit of the Americas track in Austin, Texas. In fact, the 26-year-old German is likely to clinch Sunday at the Indian Grand Prix at the Buddh International Circuit just south of New Delhi.

Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton simply put into words what a good number of Formula One fans probably are feeling about Sebastian Vettel's dominance of the sport: It's boring. After Vettel won his fourth consecutive race last weekend in South Korea, putting the Red Bull driver on a likely path to his fourth consecutive Formula One championship, Hamilton was quoted as saying "I feel for the fans. " Hamilton -- himself the 2008 Formula One champion who now drives for Mercedes -- then went on Twitter this week to "clarify" his remarks.

MADRID -- Political and social stories again take center stage at the San Sebastian film festival -- the oldest and most prestigious in the Spanish-speaking world -- which kicked off Thursday. The Iraq conflict gets high-profile attention at the 10-day festival with Nick Broomfield's "Battle for Haditha" in the official competition, an investigation into the 2005 killing of 24 civilians in Haditha by U.S. Marines.

In 1642, 60 years after the Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo expeditions up the California coast from Mexico, Sebastian Vizcaino sailed north from Acapulco to explore and chart the coast in a futile search for a Northwest Passage. In the process, he named many of our cities and islands; San Diego, Santa Catalina, San Clemente (Island), San Pedro, Monterey and more. Isn't it unusual that an explorer who has had such a powerful impact on our California history has received no recognition from our geographers?

When an intrepid explorer joins forces with a successful contemporary art gallery, the mood for the evening could be described as “artfully adventurous.” Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills hosted photographer and environmental activist Sebastian Copeland on Thursday night in a fundraiser for the Natural Resources Defense Council. The British-born artist, lecturer and self-described “extreme adventurer” -- who's based in West Hollywood -- has led expeditions in remote locations around the world to document the effects of climate change and capture, through video and photography, endangered landscapes. CHEAT SHEET: Fall arts preview Three of Copeland's 48-by-60-inch “pigment prints,” as he calls them, were on display in the airy upstairs gallery space, with 100% of the proceeds from their sales benefiting the NRDC.

Formula One changes things up a bit this weekend with a night race in Singapore, but that's unlikely to alter Sebastian Vettel's title march. The 26-year-old Red Bull driver, in seeking his fourth consecutive Formula One championship, also is looking to capture his third consecutive Singapore Grand Prix. The German driver holds a 53-point lead over Ferrari's Fernando Alonso heading into Sunday's race. And to no one's surprise, Vettel posted the fastest lap in Friday's two practice sessions on the 3.15-mile Marina Bay Street Circuit, followed by his Red Bull teammate Mark Webber.